Video conference connects Montgomery students to NASA

Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-LedgerA video monitor displays a live picture from the Kibo laboratory of International Space station of Flight Engineer Don Pettit talking to reporters from Oregon as students in a Montgomery Middle School robotics class begin a videoconference with robotics scientists from NASA.

MONTGOMERY — At one point last week during his talk with a Montgomery Upper Middle School robotics class, NASA educator Michael Hare asked the students how many astronauts were in space.

The seventh-graders responded with a chorus of answers: four, 66, seven. "That was close," Hare said immediately after the last answer.

Finally, a student guessed right — six. "Yup," Hare said. "There are six people in space."

It was the sort of rapid-fire discourse seen largely in face-to-face class discussions, but this lesson was being conducted from more than 1,600 miles away. In Houston.

On Thursday, Hare and a NASA engineer spoke to the students from the International Space Station’s mission control room at Johnson Space Center, an appearance made possible by a video system set up in the classroom and a blossoming educational program at NASA.

Answers were given instantly, and students acted no differently than they would have if the speakers had been in the room.

But most of all, the video conference brought the International Space Station to the Montgomery classroom.

The 19 seventh-graders, taught by Margaret Weinberger, saw the speakers in living color and without glitches on a 32-inch television monitor. Live images from the space station and its Houston-based control room were interspersed throughout the talk.

When Hare asked students how an astronaut could remain still while floating in the International Space Station, he switched to a live view of a NASA scientist strapped to a rail as he worked inside the station.

Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-LedgerMontgomery Middle School robotics teacher Margaret Weinberger (right) calls on one of her students to ask a question as the class takes part in a live videoconference with robotic scientists from NASA.

"I thought it would be grainy and hard to hear," Ava Hejazi, 12, said of the transmission. "It was really cool how clear it was."

The image quality marks the evolution of a nearly decade-long educational campaign at NASA. The federal agency unrolled its Digital Learning Network to schools in 2003, allowing classes to interact with scientists and engineers at three of its space centers nationwide.

Now, more than 3,500 teachers are involved in the network, including teachers from about 100 New Jersey schools. Hare called Weinberger one of the network’s frequent users, participating in 17 NASA events since October 2010.

Schools can join in if they have the proper equipment. Weinberger’s class is outfitted with a phone-like device called a Polycom, which Weinberger said cost almost $5,000 when it was purchased more than five years ago.

A microphone connected to the system was strong enough for students in the back of the classroom to ask questions from their seats.

But soon sophisticated equipment might not be needed to speak to the nation’s top space scientists. NASA wants to expand its educational program to include webcams and the popular internet broadcast program Skype, a plan aimed to make these sessions a more regular part of school lesson plans. Not only would that cut the costs for schools, but it could also make it easier to connect, according to NASA officials.

What’s not clear is how much that would degrade the current quality. The seventh-graders on Thursday agreed that this was as close to real life as you could get.